This application claims priority to Korean Patent Application No. 2003-0034033, filed on May 28, 2003, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to disc drives such as optical disc drives, and more particularly, to a tray of the disc drive with a mechanism for securely holding discs of various shapes and sizes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Typically, optical disc drives are devices which write or read information by radiating light on an optical medium (hereinafter, referred to as an optical disc) having a disc shape, such as a compact disc (CD) or a digital versatile disc (DVD).
FIG. 1 is a plane view showing a conventional optical disc drive. The conventional optical disc drive shown in FIG. 1 is a half-height type optical disc drive installed in a desk top computer. Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional optical disc drive includes a tray 20 and a main body 50 comprising a main frame 10 and a desk portion 30.
The tray 20 is installed to be slid on the main frame 10. To this end, rails 11 which guide a sliding motion of the tray 20 are disposed on the main frame 10. In general, the rails 11 are formed as an integral body with the main frame 10. In addition, a loading motor 13 which supplies power for sliding the tray 20 and a pinion gear 14 which is driven by the loading motor 13 are disposed in the main frame 10. A rack gear 22 which operates with the pinion gear 14 is disposed on a bottom surface of the tray 20.
The desk portion 30 includes a spindle motor 31 which rotates an optical disc D, and includes an optical pickup 32 which slides in a radial direction of the optical disc D for accessing the optical disc D. The desk portion 30 is installed in the main frame 10. When the tray 20 is loaded by a cam (not shown) connected to the loading motor 13, the desk portion 30 ascends toward a bottom surface of the optical disc D, and when the tray 20 is unloaded, the desk portion 30 descends.
When loading the optical disc D, the optical disc D is loaded onto a load surface 21 of the tray 20. In addition, the loading motor 13 is rotated such that the pinion gear 14 is rotated. Thus, a rotating force is transferred to the rack gear 22 such that the tray 20 is slid in toward the main frame 50. After the tray 20 is loaded, the desk portion 30 ascends toward the optical disc D. When the optical disc D is seated on a turntable 34 disposed on a shaft of the spindle motor 31, the loading operation is complete. Thereafter, as the spindle motor 31 is rotated, the optical disc D is rotated. The optical pickup 32 is slid in a radial direction of the optical disc D for accessing the optical disc D when writing or reproducing information. A process of unloading the optical disc D is performed in a reverse order of the above-described loading operation.
The load surface 21 is disposed on the tray 20. The optical disc D is loaded onto the load surface 21, and the load surface 21 is formed to be slightly stepped down from a top surface 24 of the tray 20. A diameter D1 of the load surface 21 is slightly larger than a diameter of the optical disc D. The center of the load surface 21 is concentric with the shaft of the spindle motor 31 when the tray 20 is loaded. If the optical disc D is loaded onto the load surface 21, the circumference of the optical disc D is guided by the circumference of the load surface 21 which is stepped down from the top surface of the tray 20. In this manner, the center of the optical disc D substantially overlaps with the center of the load surface 21 such that the optical disc D is stably seated on the turntable 34.
However, recently, the diameter of the optical disc D is very diverse. For example, a circular CD has a diameter of 120 mm, or alternatively may have a diameter of 80 mm. To accommodate these two diameters, the first load surface 21 is sized to hold a CD having the larger diameter of 120 mm, and a second load surface 23 is further formed to be stepped down from the load surface 21 with a smaller size for holding a CD having the smaller diameter of 80 mm. However, when the diameter of a CD varies from 120 mm or 80 mm, the stepped load surfaces 21 and 23 of FIG. 1 do not guide such a circular CD to be stably seated on the turntable 34.
Furthermore, optical discs called fashion discs have a variety of shapes, such as a name card shape, a flower shape, and a Christmas tree shape. The size and shape of the fashion discs are not uniform. The conventional stepped load surfaces 21 and 23 of FIG. 1 do not guide such fashion optical discs to be stably seated on the turntable 34.
In addition, an optical disc drive may be installed vertically as shown in FIG. 2. For example, as the size of a desk top computer 90 becomes smaller, an optical disc drive may be installed vertically in the desk top computer 90. In this case, the optical disc D undesirably moves in a direction of arrow A in FIG. 2 and is no longer stably seated on the turntable 34.
In order to prevent this problem in the prior art, as shown in FIG. 2, a protrusion jaw 26 extends from the top surface 24 of the tray 20 above the load surface 21. Although the protrusion jaw 26 aids in holding circular optical discs of uniform shape and size, the protrusion jaw 26 may not aid in holding fashion discs having various sizes and shapes.
Thus, a mechanism for securely holding optical discs is desired for vertical disc drives and/or for various sizes and shapes of the optical discs.